Bogey bugbear

Nose-picking scholar Digbeth D'Marriotti laments: "I have not been able to find any studies into the effects of eating one's bogeys [or boogers], but it is almost certain there is an Ig Nobel award set aside for anyone willing to take on this medical conundrum" (The Last Word, 23 August).

D'Marriotti will be slightly gratified, I hope, to learn that one of the studies he mentioned was thus honoured: the 2001 Ig Nobel prize in public health went to Chittaranjan Andrade and B. S. Srihari, authors of "A preliminary survey of rhinotillexomania in an adolescent sample" (Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, vol 62, p 426).

Though Andrade and Srihari did not focus their attention on the ingestion question, they did not ignore it. Deep in the bowels of their study is the observation that "subjects who reported eating their nasal debris after picking did not differ from the ...

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